Not Blameless
by InvisiblePrincess2002
Summary: The girls didn't exactly help Mrs. Garrett the day she was diagnosed with hypertension. However, when Mrs. G. begins to reflect on all the events that transpired, she realizes that she made some mistakes too, and that she needs to have a talk with her girls. One-shot. Fits into cannon.


**Note to readers:** This story is based on the NBC sit-com _The Facts of Life_ , which as far as I know is the property of Embassy Television, Columbia Pictures Television, and Sony Pictures Television. **No infringement is intended.**

I also want to give a shout out to a friend of mine. She is a very private person and prefers not to be mentioned by name, so I'll honor her wishes and I won't mention her name, but I will say that it's really because of my friend that I even _thought_ of doing this story in the first place. She came up with a lot of the idea for this story to begin with. Since she prefers not to be "spotlighted" so to speak, I'm going to respect that. But you know who you are and you know you're awesome, and you know how much I appreciate your ideas and suggestions. :)

A calm, serene, relaxing day was truly a wonderful thing that Edna Garrett had a deep appreciation for. Perhaps the reason for that was because, with her being personally responsible for four teenage girls at Eastland Academy, Blair Warner, Jo Polniaczek, Natalie Green, and Tootie Ramsey, in addition to all her other duties as school dietician, a calm, serene, relaxing day was a _very_ rare experience for her! Over two years ago, the girls had stolen the school van and wrecked it, and Jo and Blair had faked their IDs to get into the local bar in town. After an undercover cop at the bar put all the girls in jail, they were immediately expelled by the headmaster and put on probation, and Mrs. Garrett came to the rescue, promising the headmaster that she would personally be responsible for the girls, and making the suggestion that the girls be allowed to work with her in the school kitchen and cafeteria until the damage they did to the van was paid off. The headmaster agreed, but insisted that the girls also had to move out of the school dorms and into the room across the hall from Mrs. Garrett's room so she could keep her eye on them at all times. Ever since then, Mrs. Garrett and the girls had really become like a family, and Mrs. Garrett truly looked on her girls as the daughters she never had, and with them being away from their parents at boarding school during so much of the year, in many ways, she was also the only true parent they had in their lives. Her life with them was often very hectic, _especially_ on days like today, but she did love her girls very much and they loved her as well.

Edna now reminded herself of that as she ran a nice hot bubble bath for herself in the bathroom upstairs. Today had been an _extremely_ stressful day and her girls had _not_ been very much help, but they really had _tried_ to be helpful, and Edna knew that. Earlier that day, she'd had to go see her doctor for her yearly physical, and during her check-up, her doctor had diagnosed her with hypertension. When she told the girls about it, they got worried, and they did a number of things to try and help. While she'd been upstairs going through her bills, the girls had brought her some tea and a tape with Don Ho's music on it for her to listen to, hoping it would all help relax her. Seconds after the girls left her room, she opened a letter from her bank that really stressed her out. She'd recently made her final payment on her car and she'd expected to get her ownership certificate in the mail, but instead, the bank made a mistake and never credited her payment to her account and had actually sent her a notice claiming she was delinquent. When she explained the situation to the girls, Blair "helped" by asking for the keys to her car and offering to go into town and deal with the bank for her. And the next time Natalie and Tootie saw the current headmaster of Eastland, Mr. Parker, they "helped" too by convincing him to take care of his wife's birthday party all by himself rather than turning to Mrs. Garrett to cater it because Mrs. Garrett had expressed frustration to the girls earlier that day about how she shouldn't have to handle the party since it wasn't part of her job. Then when Mrs. Garrett's electric typewriter stopped working, Jo tried to "help" by offering to fix it for her so she wouldn't have to bother with taking it to a professional.

Unfortunately for the girls, pretty much everything they did to "help" Mrs. Garrett earlier that day completely backfired on them. When Blair borrowed Mrs. Garrett's car to go to town and deal with the bank, she made the very big (and _very stupid_ ) mistake of actually leaving the keys in the door of the car while she was inside taking care of Mrs. Garrett's banking problem, which led to her car getting stolen. After she returned to Eastland, she explained the situation to Jo, which then led to Jo offering to fix Mrs. Garrett's typewriter for her so she wouldn't try to use her car to take the typewriter into town and get it fixed. Then after Mrs. Garrett learned that Mr. Parker wasn't going to turn to her to cater his wife's birthday party and saw him go into a meeting with a man who looked just like another caterer she knew of, she got hurt and upset. To make matters even _worse_ , when Mrs. Garrett pressed the girls for answers about where her car keys were, Natalie lied, claiming that Blair had made the sudden, impulsive decision to get her car painted as a surprise for her, and Jo and Tootie went along with the lie as well. Blair actually told her the truth about her car getting stolen a little while later (although she left out the part about how careless she was with her car keys), but because of the girls' lie, Mrs. Garrett didn't believe her. However, later that evening, a police officer came to Eastland and let Mrs. Garrett know that her stolen car had been found and returned her car keys to her. After the police officer left, Mrs. Garrett yelled and fussed at Blair, Natalie, and Tootie for not telling her the truth about what happened to her car, and for convincing Mr. Parker to handle his wife's birthday party all by himself.

However, that whole scene now replayed in her mind as she allowed herself to sink down into the relaxing warm water of the tub underneath the sea of bubbles, and she realized that she really had been rather hard on the girls today. It was true, of course, that Natalie, Tootie, and Jo were wrong to lie to her about her car, and it was also true that the girls' actions throughout the day had been far from helpful. Blair had gotten her car stolen while she was at the bank; Natalie and Tootie had convinced Mr. Parker to handle his wife's birthday all by himself and that had ended up in Mrs. Garrett's feelings getting hurt, and while Jo had _tried_ to fix her electric typewriter, she hadn't fully succeeded. But then again, the more Mrs. Garrett thought about it, the more she realized that _she_ hadn't exactly been blameless, either. As she mulled it all over, she realized that she really had been unfair to the girls. She'd been wrong to fuss at Blair about the big lie that she was getting her car painted because Blair _had_ in fact told her the truth about her car getting stolen. It also hadn't been fair for her to get on Natalie's and Tootie's case about them talking Mr. Parker into handling his wife's birthday all by himself because they weren't mind readers, and they'd had no way of knowing how it would hurt her feelings when he decided not to turn to her to cater the party. And Mrs. Garrett knew perfectly well that her response to learning that Mr. Parker wasn't going to be turning to her to cater his wife's birthday party had _hardly_ been rational.

On top of all that, she also knew that even though her relationships with her girls should be fair, with each of them doing an equal amount of giving and taking, she was still the adult of their family, and it wasn't the girls' responsibility to take care of her health. As an adult, it was _her_ responsibility to take care of her own health. The girls were exactly that – _girls_ – and not her mother. She knew that _she_ was responsible for her own life and well-being herself. Mrs. Garrett knew in hindsight that the girls had only gone to all that trouble because they cared about her as much as they did and because they were worried about her, and having her girls worrying about her was the last thing she wanted.

So in that moment, she made up her mind that the minute she was done with her bubble bath and had gotten dressed for bed, she was going to go into the girls' room and have a little talk with them.

About fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the girls' door. All the girls were in their nightclothes and ready for bed. Blair was wearing an expensive pair of light blue silk pajamas; Natalie was wearing an oversized purple shirt with a big number on the back that looked like a football jersey; Tootie was wearing a flannel nightgown, and Jo was wearing her usual flannel pajamas. However, even though they were dressed for bed, they were all still up, standing around in their room.

"Come in," Blair's voice called, and Mrs. Garrett came inside, wearing a red nightgown and slippers.

"Hello, girls," she said.

"Hi, Mrs. Garrett," said Tootie.

"Is there something we can do for you, Mrs. Garrett?" Natalie asked her.

"No, girls. There's just a little something I wanted to say to all of you. I know today has been a very stressful day, not just for me, but for all of us. Things might not have turned out the way any of us planned today and things did get pretty crazy, but I know you girls only did the things you did because you were worried about me."

"We care about you, Mrs. G.," Jo told her. "I mean, you're always doing so much for us. We don't know what we'd do without you."

"Maybe we did overdo things a bit today with the whole helping hand routine, Mrs. Garrett," Natalie admitted. "It's just that it's hard not to worry. I'm a doctor's daughter. I know what hypertension has done to a lot of my father's patients. I know that high blood pressure causes terrible things, like strokes and kidney failure and heart disease."

"When Natalie started talking about it earlier today, we got scared that those things might happen to you, too," Tootie explained, and Mrs. Garrett's face really softened. Yes, her girls could be a real handful at times, but they were also so loving.

"Girls, you _do not_ have to worry. As long as I continue to eat right and exercise and take my medication, I'll be perfectly fine, and that is _exactly_ what I am going to do. I assure you that I am always going to take good care of myself. The doctor told me himself that despite my having hypertension, I was still in great shape, and I'm going to stay that way."

"I guess you're right, Mrs. Garrett. My dad does have patients who have suffered complications because of their high blood pressure, but a lot of it was because they didn't listen to him and take care of themselves. My dad also has several patients with hypertension who do take their medication and eat right and exercise like they're supposed to and they're doing great."

"You see there, Natalie? You girls don't have anything to worry about. I'll be just fine."

"That's comforting to hear, Mrs. Garrett," said Blair.

"Well now that that's settled, there's something else I need to say to you girls. Blair, Natalie, Tootie, I owe you girls an apology. Blair, I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier for lying about what happened to my car. That really wasn't very fair of me. I know that you _did_ tell me the truth about what happened and that you had nothing to do with that whole paint story. And Natalie, Tootie, I'm sorry I fussed at you for talking Mr. Parker into handling his wife's birthday party by himself. That wasn't very fair of me either. There was no way you two could have known that he was going to go to another caterer and that that would upset me as much as it did. I know you girls were just trying to help."

"Yeah, we were," said Natalie, "but I owe you an apology, too, Mrs. Garrett. I was wrong to tell you that whole lie about Blair getting your car painted."

"And Tootie and I were wrong to go along with the lie," Jo pointed out.

"We're sorry about that, Mrs. Garrett," Tootie said.

"And I'm sorry, too," Blair added. "You see, Mrs. Garrett, your car getting stolen the way it did today was really my fault. I was careless. When I went into the bank, I forgot and left your keys in the door of your car. It was such a stupid thing for me to do."

" _The stupidest!_ " Jo didn't hesitate to chime in.

"Anyway, Mrs. Garrett, I know you said you didn't want me to buy you another car, but how about letting me pay for a new radio to be put in your car?"

Since the person who stole Mrs. Garrett's car had taken the radio out of it, Blair's suggestion seemed quite fair, and Mrs. Garrett smiled in that moment because _that_ was the kind of honesty and maturity she'd _really_ wanted to see out of her girls earlier that day. She certainly didn't appreciate Blair being so careless with her keys, but she _was_ really proud of her now to see her being honest enough to admit her mistake and being mature enough to accept responsibility for it.

"I think that sounds fair," Mrs. Garrett responded. "While I'm not exactly thrilled that you were so careless with my car keys earlier today, Blair, I am very proud of you now to see you taking responsibility for your mistake."

Blair smiled and said, "Thank you, Mrs. Garrett."

"We really were just trying to help you, Mrs. Garrett, but when it comes to all the things that went wrong today, none of us were blameless," said Tootie.

"That's a good observation, Tootie, and you're absolutely right. We _all_ could have handled things better today than we did. But even though things didn't work out the way you girls intended, I do appreciate it that you all tried so hard to be helpful. However, like I told you, you girls don't have to worry about me. I'm going to be perfectly alright."

"We know you will be, Mrs. G.," Jo told her.

"Well now that that's settled, why don't we all go to bed and get some sleep, huh? Today's been a long day."

"It sure has been," Natalie said.

"I know that after today, I'm certainly bushed," said Blair.

"Yeah, me too," Jo agreed.

"I think I'm ready for bed, too," Tootie said.

"Goodnight, girls. Sweet dreams," Mrs. Garrett said as she began to walk out the door.

"Pleasant dreams to you, too, Mrs. Garrett," Blair called after her just before she shut the door.

Once Mrs. Garrett left, all the girls got into their beds and Tootie turned out the lights, and they all hoped and prayed that tomorrow wouldn't be as crazy as today had been!


End file.
